


Kid Gloves

by RokettoMusashi



Series: Sickfic Prompts [3]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Sickfic, ive had this half written for months now, meowth's there for emotional support i guess, some light angst in the middle, some poketech era stuff, this is pretty platonic but i guess anything is rocketshipping w those two if you squint hard enough, whos shocked?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 21:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19894528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RokettoMusashi/pseuds/RokettoMusashi
Summary: A study in looking after the woman who insists she wants everything but.---For Wordmage's "Sickfic Prompts" challenge on tumblr!





	Kid Gloves

**Author's Note:**

> the original prompt was:
> 
> \- "It’s a known fact that Jessie has trouble accepting help, even when she’s sick; the others have learned specific “acceptable” methods over time."
> 
> but it really got away from me because these things always do.

The first time James hears it, it doesn’t entirely register to him what it is.

He’s a comfortable medium into his teenage years, half-sentient in Jessie’s PokéTech dorm with his back pressed up against hers. Springtime is nearing its end, and the two of them are spending it how they’ve spent far too many of their days in this wretched building—shoved into the stuffy room, books scattered around them haphazardly, whining in harmonious immaturity as they try to retain even a single scrap of the knowledge contained within. 

In the stillness that had set in, James feels her take in a disjointed few breaths, immediately followed by a high-pitched half-squeak that makes him blink a few times in surprise. Still back to back, he curiously angles his head around, giving her an almost mystified glance.

Jessie’s halfway through rubbing rhythmically at her nose when she notices him staring, a nervous blush creeping up on her cheeks that makes her reflexively jolt away from him, her sharp tone a stark contrast to it all.

“ _ What _ ,” she spits at James. “Have you never heard a sneeze before?”

The venom doesn’t seem to phase him, which only makes her angrier.

“... _ that’s _ your sneeze?”

Her face just burns more at the question, practically running her the colour of her hair.

“Are you judging my biology for quality, you  _ dolt?! _ ” she bites. “What’s  _ wrong _ with it?!”

Suddenly aware of how uncharacteristically insecure she sounds beneath the bite, James manages to snap back to himself, throwing up his palms in a gesture of timid surrender.

“N-nothing!” he stammers, blinking nervously. “Um, it’s just…”

It’s disingenuously meek, he wants to say. It sounds like a cutiefly tiptoeing over a tulip. It sounds like a pikachu getting the wind knocked out of it. It sounds utterly embellished in its smallness, completely the opposite of what he’d expect poised up against the battle axe of a girl he knows she is. 

_ It’s adorable, _ he wants to say, but values his life far too much.

“Can’t say I’ve heard one like  _ yours _ before,” he elects to settle on. Jessie softens, turning back to a pile of what could ostensibly be schoolwork.

“Wish I could say the same for you,” she rolls her eyes. “I’m gonna start carrying antihistamines in my purse, you know.”

“Perish the thought.”

He feels her settle back into her position with an affectionate sort of shimmy at his back, a contented sigh that brings a lilt to her voice that wasn’t there before. The moment is incredibly quiet, all things considered, and James doesn’t know until he’s looking back on it years later that it’s a milestone of sorts in their friendship.

The boy chews at his eraser as the words blur on the page in front of him, and he and Jessie drift somewhere else.

* * *

The second time, it’s a sort of comfort to him, a sound he didn’t realize he’d missed. 

Stumbling into Team Rocket half-starved and on the brink of death, James’ expectations were already so far from his consciousness, floating away in the anti-gravity of all his life had become. When he sees Jessie across the room, it’s a cold sort of surprise. Without her even casting him another glance, he understands how she wound up in this wretched place. Still, despite everything, he wishes the streets had treated her better.

It’s no surprise when they end up on the same team, no surprise when they taste victory together, and no surprise when they find that third voice the two of them always seemed to have a sneaking sort of suspicion they were missing. The universe seems to be saying  _ try again, _ and even with hardship behind them, they do.

Now, they’re in a shoddy cabin so much like the dorm they’d spent all their time escaping from class to before, a year or ten not doing much to blanket the nostalgia ruling every square inch of their hearts. As the initial weirdness of reconnecting after so much time apart wore off, Jessie had been warm enough to James that he was starting to question if their falling out had happened to begin with. Now, though, there’s a bite to her that seems a shade sharper than the one he remembers from their youth.

The third time he hears it, it’s a little foreboding.

“Are you certain you’re feeling okay?” he reaches an ungloved hand out, and Jessie smacks it down hard before he can touch it to her forehead, eliciting a yelp.

“You should worry more about what I’m going to do to  _ you _ if you keep  _ asking! _ ”

Him and Meowth share a look that’s new and finding its legs, one they both have a feeling will become common in time. Jessie scrubs maddeningly at her nose, desperate to stave off another sneeze she knows will unearth several more if she lets it tear through her. 

James so rarely forgets, and it’s one of the few moments where she finds it to be one of his more irritating qualities. She’s sure he remembers her stumbling into class the day after their study session, feverish and weak as she barked out scratchy curses at him for daring to notice. As long as she’s known him, his eyes have felt like a microscope, a fact that threw her into a world where attraction flirted with repulsion. 

She takes an early bedtime with a huff in her teammates’ directions, absolutely refusing to let a hypothetical lapse in her otherwise flawless health impact tomorrow’s mission. 

Jessie had only just found her people. She’d be damned before she let them gaze upon her with pity.

  
  
  


James and Meowth find her on her knees in the mud, a divine strike of thunder above the only light for miles in the deafening grey of the storm. Gaining ground feels impossible as they make a beeline toward her, and guilt hits James hard when he’s clutching her in his arms. Her uniform’s soaked through so heavily it’s transparent, the pale skin of her shoulders dotting colour onto it in moistened patches. Jessie grits her teeth when he grabs her, weakly trying to wrestle free before her grasp on everything fades.

A rattling fit of coughing is what pulls her awake, sounding far too delicate for how deep in her lungs she can feel it. It brings tears to her eyes, ones she’s desperate to hide, but a fierce shudder unearths them anyway as she buries herself back in her blankets with a weak groan.

Testing his bravery, James tries once more to allow his fingers contact with her blazing face. It’s not much surprising—given the foggy light that’s been in his partner’s eyes all day, the flush on her otherwise far too pale face—but he still finds himself wincing with empathy pains. Her lack of protest plunges him further into anxiety.

Jessie’s breathing is far too deep, the kind that elicits an ominous kind of worry. The boys can tell it’s a conscious effort to self-soothe, to keep herself steady. Even at her weakest, she fights, in what small ways she still can.

Hours pass like that, with the wind howling beneath the patter of rain outside. Eventually, it fades to a far more soothing rhythm, one they know beckons a softer tomorrow. Meowth stays curled in on himself at James’ side, stirs with a half-buried trill when the man pulls himself forward to check their teammate’s temperature again. Without saying anything, Meowth knows the answer as it’s written on James’ face—nothing’s changed. 

“I can’t bear this,” he says, in a moment of weakness. “What made you think pushing yourself like this was a good idea?!”

Neither of them are expecting Jessie to hear, let alone to turn away from them in an indignant sort of swivel. She buries herself in the sorry excuse for a blanket they’ve mustered, swallowing tears.

“Shut up,” she chokes out, words thick and heavy.

James backpedals, his anger vanishing in an instant. “Jessie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“I hate this,” Jessie interrupts him. “I hate it, too, okay?!”

There’s a vulnerability in her voice that’s unheard of, a source hidden deep beneath her walls that the fever’s unearthed. Praying for its insight, Meowth’s the one who pushes forward.

“I don’t t’ink anyone likes bein’ sick, Jess,” he tells her. “Least ya could do is tell ya buddies about it so’s we’s can give ya a hand.”

“I wanted to,” she says back, small and meek and not herself. “I did.”

“‘N’ why didn’t dat play out?”

“I can’t,” Jessie says, unable to muster much else. “I can’t.”

She curls further into herself, shivering with a ferocity that pulls James back into his body.  _ This feels wrong, _ his right mind shouts.  _ Seeing her like this. _

“I’ll be strong,” she continues, suddenly, and then, the tears finally breach past her fortress—

“Don’t go.”

She turns to face the two of them, her big blue eyes utterly wrought with fear. Guilt stabs at James for his earlier outburst, and he runs through a million better, kinder, more empathetic things he could’ve said in his head instead of letting his burdened heart rule him. Instead, he follows Meowth’s lead, the both of them placing their hands on Jessie’s own, a silent gesture of love and loyalty, one they never do go back on.

“We ain’t goin’ nowhere, capiche?” Meowth says with a bittersweet grin. “We’s a team.”

James is far more forward-facing, mental post-it notes tacking every wall of his psyche. “Be as strong as you must. We’ll handle the rest.”

Had she the strength to sit up, Jessie would’ve allowed herself to cling to them for dear life, to thank them for seeing her so small and useless and elect to stay, still. Instead, she wipes away her tears with a shaking hand, clutches her friends’ own with the other. Swallowing knives, head in a vice, floating through the glittering stars. The scenery, at least, is nice. 

“Love you, Jess,” James says, pulling her blanket back over her shoulders and giving her back a tender half-rub.

“Love you,” she echoes, as he’s a purple blur in her quickly drifting vision.

“Mama.”

* * *

The four-hundred and seventy-second time James hears it, he’s throwing the cabin door open with his fingertips half-frozen from carrying the pint. He thanks his lucky stars for the breezy weather, hiding the sun behind its damp haze, throwing off the scent trail the growlithe at his back were undoubtedly trying to follow. 

Jessie rubs at her temples, cocooned in the kotatsu and shivering despite it, a pile of tissues very inconspicuously overflowing from the bin adjacent, wearing the pastel robe she only wears when she’s too ill to choose otherwise. 

“And where were you?” she says, her voice sounding like utter death.

“Lightly shoplifting,” James tells her. “Ice cream?”

“I’m not sick,” Jessie says.

“Heavens, no,” he agrees. “I’m just going to leave this on the table, then.”

“It’ll melt.”

“Pity,” James says. “Hopefully  _ someone _ eats it before then.”

She rolls her whole head along with her eyes, in such a way that makes sure James can’t ignore it. He carries on with his business, shuttering the windows of the cabin so that no prying eyes can see in.

It’s a routine once maddening, and now something of a point of pride, he thinks as he takes his place beside Meowth in the small kitchen. Just by the look on the cat’s face, he can tell they’re on the same page.

Jessie always loses her appetite, first. She’ll turn down her favourite of foods with a half-hearted wave of her hand and a comment about watching her flawless figure, and the next day she’ll be shivering no matter what the weather’s like. She’ll squeak out a sneeze and fight off six more, and once her team make any mention of the fact that she only does that when she’s unwell, she’ll suddenly gain a fire in her blood that burns twice as bright as the one she carries when she’s feeling fine. 

A more reasonable woman would take a day or two off, but historically, Jessie only ever wants those when she’s right as rain, ever-defiant of fate’s plans. She keeps going, until the fever makes the room spin like an optical illusion in a blender and she can barely keep herself aloft in its swirling sea.

Ideally, her friends envision a life where she admits outright how badly she wants their comfort when she’s sick. Realistically, they value their lives and don’t try to pry the words out of her.

If James and Meowth can pride themselves on anything, though, it’s the ability to listen with things other than their ears. 

It’s in the way she lets out a contented sigh when James settles down behind her and gives her one of his award-winning massages. In the way she smiles around the spoon as the ice cream soothes the throbbing pain in her poor throat. In the way she tries to hide the glimmer of adoration in her eyes when Meowth drops not one or two but five brilliantly scarlet apples in a bowl on the kotatsu and says nothing else about why he’s done so. They work silently, without words, firm in their comfort but still indulgent of her stalwart denial.

The two of them snuggle up on either side of her, and Jessie tries not to moan  _ too _ sensually at how cool James’ bare shoulder feels as she leans her feverish cheek against him. She thinks that perhaps,  _ just perhaps, _ she’s worked hard enough today and can justify drifting into dreams, if only for a moment. 

It’s about as close to an admittance as they’re going to get from her, the sound of her breathing evening out as she falls asleep. With a satisfied grin, Meowth pulls himself away from the warmth of the kotatsu and throws the empty pint of ice cream away.

The four-hundred and ninety-eighth time James hears it, it’s shed its delicate and airy cadence in favour of his own far less, doubling him over as he tries not to regret stealing bites of his partner’s food while she was an absolute viral hotspot.

“There you go again, catching colds more often than you catch pokémon,” Jessie says with a smirk in her voice, arms crossed.

_ Seems so, dearest, _ he so badly wants to say, but instead leans against his partner with a defeated sort of sigh.  _ Pity we can’t all be as bulletproof as you. _

If James can pride himself on anything, it’s the ability to listen with things other than his ears. 

Her thank you comes in their mission long discarded, her manicure tracing ciphers through his hair as he takes his own hard-earned rest.


End file.
